The Hobo and The Ghetto

Each of these projects grew out of its author's biography. Before he became a student of sociology, Nels Anderson had traveled the country as a hobo. Then, in graduate school he studied the kind of men he had known when he was on the rails and on the road. In his research he made extensive use of the life history method. The Hobo was the first monograph published in the University of Chicago Sociological Series, a cooperative venture between the University's Local Community Research Committee and the University of Chicago Press.

Born in Germany, Louis Wirth came to the United States in 1911, at the age of fourteen. After completing high school in Omaha, Nebraska, Wirth came to the University of Chicago for his undergraduate and graduate education. A Jewish immigrant himself, he studied Chicago's Jewish immigrant community and used it as the basis for his dissertation, "The Ghetto." He received his Ph.D. in 1926, and the book was published in 1928 in the same series as Nels Anderson's.

After receiving his Ph.D., Wirth taught for a year at Tulane University. The University of Chicago appointed him to its Department of Sociology faculty in 1928, and he had an illustrious career in Chicago as a productive teacher and scholar. He served as president of the American Sociological Association and the International Sociological Association.

Cover showing silhouette of a man holding a bindle
Book Jacket for Second Printing of The Hobo...

1930
University of Chicago Press Records

Photo of a man in a shabby suit, to represent a hobo
Photograph used as an illustration in The Hobo...

c1923
University of Chicago Press Records

Handwritten page from a manuscript about the homeless
"The Central Business District and the Homeless Man"

Manuscript, c1923
Ernest Watson Burgess Papers

Press sheet for more info on The Hobo
Prospectus for The Hobo...

1923
University of Chicago Press Records

Book cover showing woodcut of a town square
Book Jacket for The Ghetto

1928
University of Chicago Press Records

Two woodcuts: one of man playing cello and another of a man harvesting a field
Printing Proofs for Illustrations for The Ghetto

c1928
University of Chicago Press Records